"Maine"ly Integrationhttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com
Technology Integration in Central MaineThu, 14 Dec 2017 02:27:53 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/71bad5962984667865c026f18bdb4937?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.png"Maine"ly Integrationhttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com
Using Time to Save Time: How much is too much?https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/using-time-to-save-time-how-much-is-too-much/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/using-time-to-save-time-how-much-is-too-much/#respondWed, 09 Sep 2015 16:28:43 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=254]]>My name is Martha, and I am an on-again off-again follower of ed tech gurus through online forums and social media.

I wish I could tell you that once I find a forum I like, I follow it religiously, but that would be a bit of an exaggeration. You see, I know forums, blogs, and twitter feeds are good resources, but who has the time to stay up-to-date? While the authors are writing all these great time saving tips, I am consuming time and being consumed by ideas as I try and stay current on my feeds.

So, I decided I had to let the thousands of unread tweets and posts that are filling my twitter feed and forum tab die an unread death.

I’m starting from a clean slate and moving forward…but with a slightly smaller scope.

Wicked Decent Learning or @WickedDecent for some wicked cool ideas on teaching and learning (This one I follow on twitter.)

Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher for a tech integration in education (This one I follow on twitter.)

Who are your must follows? Do you follow them through an email forum, tweet deck, facebook, or some other reader or social media? Leave your ideas and suggestions for PD through online sources.

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/using-time-to-save-time-how-much-is-too-much/feed/0mthibodeauSchool Day Gratitudeshttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/school-day-gratitudes/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/school-day-gratitudes/#commentsMon, 31 Aug 2015 16:00:00 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=249]]>I have a friend that has beaten cancer. Let’s just pause and rejoice about that – since we are all touched by the “c word” sometime in our lives. Each day, during treatment and since, she has posted to Facebook about the things in life for which she is grateful. Her goal was three items each day, but she almost always comes up with more. This lady is an amazingly positive influence in my life, and I’d like to try and emulate her gracious and life-affirming way of looking at challenges. So, I am posting to Facebook – yes, Facebook – each school day with one gratitude. Yes, I said one. As my friend is an author and has a way with words, I cannot hope to live up to her example in quantity…and probably not in quality…although I hope someone enjoys it.

I will not be copying all of the posts here, but I thought I might post the first few.

School Day #1 Gratitude:

Back at it. I am so grateful for the ability to be involved in education. This is year 33, and I still love my job. So each morning before I go to work I will post 1 thing I am grateful for. Thanks for your wonderful example, Sue Thibodeau Baumgardner

School year day 1 gratitude: I woke up on time. This is something I have nightmares about…seriously!

School Day #3 Gratitude

What, I missed Day #2? Ok, well here are two:
1. My husband brought me flowers for the first day of school. Sunflowers “symbolize adoration, loyalty and longevity,” according to proflowers.com. 25 years of marriage and 32 years in education – good choice, honey! I adore you.
2. I found a great resource for helping kids revisit study skills. This internet scavenger hunt has three different levels and is a good introductory activity to discuss some digital citizenship and classroom management techniques as an aside to the study skills. You know, two birds, one stone….

So, having said that, I WILL post to FB every school day, and I will try and post to this blog every week during the school year.

Have a wonderful year, everyone!!

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/school-day-gratitudes/feed/1mthibodeauJim Compton's photo.Google Classroomhttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/google-classroom/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/google-classroom/#respondTue, 09 Sep 2014 13:58:49 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=234]]>Will it live up to the hype? I have several teachers that are very excited about working with the new Google Classroom and they are going to share their experiences. Why should you use it? Found this interesting infograhic about some of the features of Google Classroom.

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/edit-images-in-google-slides/feed/0mthibodeauVisual Literacyhttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/visual-literacy/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/visual-literacy/#commentsTue, 28 May 2013 16:11:55 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=228]]>My last post dealt with infographics. That is one type of image that students will come across as they navigate on the web. What else is out there that we should be preparing our students to recognize? Here are 10 sites (articles, lists of resources, tools) to help you teach visual literacy:

The Visual Literacy Toolbox from the University of Maryland has some interesting online activities – From reading political cartoons to creating a map of a Utopian Society by clicking and dragging certain elements in the SimUtopia app.

Demographics and Deception Learn how maps and statistics can be used to persuade you. Many articles like this can be found at the Learn NC site by searching for visual literacy.

Concept Mapping/Mind Mapping is an important skill for our students, and so is collaboration. Mind Meister and Mindomo allow for collaborative mind mapping. (Here’s an example of a Mindomo on Information Literacy.)

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/visual-literacy/feed/1mthibodeauInfographicshttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/infographics/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/infographics/#commentsFri, 17 May 2013 22:14:51 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=223]]>Infographics are very popular in media today; they show information in a unique, interesting, informative way. There are many sites that allow you to create infographics, like visual.ly, and some have a database of infographics, like Daily Infographic. THIS IS NOT a site to send students to! But there are some really interesting infographics there for you to look at and choose to use with your students.

Publishing Student Work:

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/elementary-technology-and-literacy/feed/3mthibodeauVisuwordsOnline Lessons and Projectshttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/online-lessons-and-projects/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/online-lessons-and-projects/#commentsThu, 28 Mar 2013 05:08:48 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=184]]>Busy as a bee? Busy as a beaver? How about busy as a teacher? Meeting the demands that are placed on today’s classroom teacher are nearly impossible given there are only 24 hours in each day. Teachers need lessons that align to standards, meet the needs of diverse learners, and fit in with the culture of the classroom and school. There are several databases of lessons that allow teachers to search based on multiple factors including content, type of activity, and length of lesson. Let’s look at the interface for four of these sites.

6. eThemes – My first choice for finding online resources!! These resources are age appropriate, the content has been checked for accuracy, and the pages have been checked three links deep. You can also request to have an eTheme created for your specific topic.

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/online-lessons-and-projects/feed/1mthibodeauThinkfinity Keyword SearchThinkfinity Standards Interfacezooniverse screen captureDiscovery Lesson Plan LibraryMcRel 1McRel 2McRel 3Blogs vs. Websiteshttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/blogs-vs-websites/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/blogs-vs-websites/#respondThu, 14 Mar 2013 01:46:23 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=206]]>Why is this an important question? The question for teachers is no longer should I have a web presence, but what type of web presence should I have. A blog is a website, but it’s a special kind. Blogs are more dynamic versus a static web site, they are updated often and allow for comments from readers. Information on the blog is arranged in a chronological order – with the latest entry at the beginning of the page. Most blog entries are tagged so that they are easily searchable.

Blogs and websites can have links, images, and multimedia files embedded, in this way they are similar. They can also both be “followed” via an RSS feed. I have compiled a few articles for you to peruse about blogs and websites. Funny enough, some of them are blogs and some are websites.

Check out the following video on creating a blog with blogger in less than 5 minutes!

]]>https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/blogs-vs-websites/feed/0mthibodeauCollaborating with Google Drivehttps://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/collaborating-with-google-drive/
https://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/collaborating-with-google-drive/#respondTue, 29 Jan 2013 16:16:05 +0000http://mainelyintegration.wordpress.com/?p=160]]>Being a Google Apps for Education school gives us many opportunities for engaging our student with collaboration. Google Docs/Drive is a good place to start. Think of it as a large filing cabinet in which you store files of any type, documents, presentations, images, videos, etc. You can organize these files many different ways – that’s one of the beautiful thing about electronic files. One file may show up in several different folders, depending on the content.

Sharing Docs with students makes for fewer trips to the copier, and reduces the “I lost it” excuses. You can choose to share docs that students can’t edit, such as classroom expectations, or you can share templates that you want students to work on and hand back in to you. In this case the students would need to make a copy, usually renaming it to include their name, and work on the copy. Then they simply share the copy with you and you both have access to the student work. Another way to do this, is to have the students create the document (presentation, spreadsheet, drawing, etc.) and have them share it with you. Here’s a short video on sharing documents with students.

Commenting on student work can be done in several ways in Google drive. The comment button that shows up when you have been given permission to comment tucks the comments on the side of the page, in relation to where the cursor is in the document at the time you are commenting. For instance, if you want to give a student information about a particular sentence, you can highlight that sentence and then hit the comment button. That tells the student exactly where your comment belongs in the document. You can also comment directly in the paper, if you have been given editing privileges. This is usually best done in an alternative color for visibility.
Google Forms gives you the ability to ask different types of questions and collect responses. You can find the Google Help menu for forms here. Click here to download a text tutorial with screenshots. Here is a video tutorial on using forms in Google drive:

For the more advanced users of forms that want to create self grading forms check out this video. Enjoy using Forms – so many uses so little time!!